


Some Mistakes, Given Time

by cm (mumblemutter)



Series: Do Over [3]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Heroes: Volume 5, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 02:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Peter just really doesn't care anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Mistakes, Given Time

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for everything up to and including episode 4x10, _Brother's Keeper_. See [series header](http://archiveofourown.org/series/1198) for more notes.

_"Made it through all the craziness, you and me. We can make it through anything, Nathan."_

"Even death?"

"Why not."

+

Nathan dies, and Peter wakes up the next day with the hangover to destroy all hangovers, and the world's not taken his clear and concise advice and just gone away, and his brother, his brother's still dead. Nathan left his jacket on a chair. Peter picks it up and puts it to his face, then realizes that it doesn't smell much like Nathan at all. That it smells like a dead man. Or one soon to be.

Mom looks as if she's been crying for weeks. Perhaps she has. "I've lost one son already, Peter. Please. I can't afford to lose another. I can't afford to keep losing another."

"It's fine, Mom," Peter says, and he hugs her to him. She feels entirely fragile and vulnerable in his arms, and that's worse, almost, than everything else. His mother has never been breakable before. "I will be fine. I just need to finish some things first."

"I can't - your brother's dead, Peter. We need to find a way to move on. René was right. I was allowing my emotions to get the better of me." She draws herself up, strong and resolute, and he wonders, not for the first time, if she knows. Surprisingly, for the first time, he doesn't quite care. Perhaps because there's no reason for it to matter any more. Nathan is dead.

Nathan is dead, and he dies and he dies and he dies, and Peter remembers losing him once, twice, often enough that some part of him still harbors the hope that they can bring him back somehow, that they can fix things.

Some part of him knows, that they can fix things.

+

There's a man named Samuel that tells him, in low, soothing tones, "I know what it's like to lose a brother, Peter. Let me help you. You can have, if you want, a new family. It won't be the same, but I find the company of others helps you heal."

Personally, Peter finds planning for revenge far more productive, but he accepts Samuel's invitation anyway. He doesn't know what Samuel's power is exactly just yet, but he doesn't want it in any case. The one he has he'll cling to, all he has left, the ability to lift himself up and fly away.

Some distant part of him comes to clarity when he's drifting off to sleep in the trailer that Lydia made up for him, where the bed smells peculiarly of Nathan, that if he has Nathan's ability, then what he really has is Sylar's.

At breakfast the next morning, the salt-shaker flies into his hand as if it had entirely no reason to be anyplace else. Peter smiles, and feels hungry for the first time in weeks.

+

Hiro shows up one morning, disheveled and terrified. He spots Peter and makes a beeline for him, but Samuel catches up to him and spirits him away before he can get there. Peter watches them go, and wonders vaguely if he should intervene. Wonders if apathy is also a stage of grief.

Hiro finally manages to make it to his trailer at night, right as Peter's leaving for dinner, and he doesn't get a word in before Hiro starts complaining about the _bad man_, and Peter pretends to pay attention and starts thinking about how easy it would be to just touch him, and go back, and fix things so they are the way they should be. But then he remembers all the threads running through Isaac's loft, and how quickly it gets to be so very complicated, and how it always, somehow, gets worse instead of better, and then it doesn't seem so easy after all.

That, and how right now, wanting Sylar dead seems to be more important wanting Nathan alive, and it's the only reason Peter walks away instead of putting his hand on Hiro's arm.

"Peter Petrelli, you not listening to me," Hiro says, and he sounds genuinely distressed, but Peter keeps walking.

At dinner, he asks Samuel casually, "What happened to Hiro."

Samuel says, "He was lost to me for a while, it was my mistake. But now he has returned. Do not worry, Peter."

Some part of Peter realizes, he probably should. But that part can't seem to make the rest of him care.

+

In the end, it comes down to him and Sylar, on a Manhattan rooftop, more powerful than anyone else in the entire world. "You realize this can't end well," Sylar says.

"Spare me the speech, please. I've heard it all before."

"Aren't you worried about all the innocent people around us? I'm not afraid of collateral damage, Peter. What about you?"

And Peter smiles, and says, with perfect clarity, "For Nathan. The world could burn," and watches as Sylar's smug grin falters, just a little.

He has grief and rage on his side, and Sylar, he still has a tiny bit of Nathan inside him, not enough for a whole person but enough that when it comes down to it, when all they've got left to fight with is the equal and opposite strength of both their powers, rock meeting hard place in exactly the same amount of force, Sylar breaks. He breaks, and he falls, and he turns to ash, and Peter howls, and what's coursing through his veins is like nothing he's ever felt before, worse than when he blew up, when all his body cells lit up like fireflies and burst out of him, ready to take out an entire city if not for his brother. If not for Nathan, and it's the thought of him then, that finally allows Peter to grab everything back, taper everything off. It's a relief to collapse to his knees, and he's still buzzing so it takes him a while to realize: half the city block is gone.

+

Two things Peter thought would happen for sure once Nathan was revenged:

1) That he'd feel better.  
2) That if others died along the way, he'd feel terrible about it.

That he feels absolutely nothing of the sort, that today is only yesterday with less people in the world that weren't Nathan, doesn't bother him quite as much as he thinks it should.

Samuel pats him on the back and says, "You did well, Peter. I'm proud of you."

"What's there to be proud of. My brother's still dead."

He starts walking away, but Samuel lays a hand on his arm. "Come, Peter. We have much to talk about. About our family, and your place in it."

+

Mohinder shows up one day. He looks terrible, wide-eyed and sickly, and he says, "Hiro had me institutionalized. First he saved my life, and then he had me institutionalized." He sounds vaguely confused, politely betrayed.

"Yeah, well. Hiro's a complicated guy, Mohinder. What do you want?"

"To warn you, of course. This Samuel, this carnival."

"Is dangerous? Samuel's an evil megalomaniac that probably plans to take over the world and enslave or kill us all?" Peter slings one arm around Mohinder's shoulder and starts walking, and he can still feel Mohinder's strength, resisting briefly, but Peter's more powerful than he is, and Mohinder trusts him, so he lets himself be dragged along, away from everyone else. "Did you know my brother is dead," he says conversationally, when they're relatively alone.

"Oh no." Mohinder's face falls, turns sorrowful. "Peter, I'm so sorry. I wish I could have done something to help."

"It's fine. I'm over it. Thank you, for telling me about Samuel." Peter pulls him closer and kisses him on the cheek, moves his arm from Mohinder's shoulders to around his neck. "But you really should have stayed where Hiro left you." Mohinder tries to pull away, but Peter whispers, low into his ear, "Forget. Go back to India. Never come back." Matt Parkman's parting gift to Sylar, one of the more useful ones he's acquired.

"I think I will...I think I'll just go." Peter watches him leave, stumble in the dark, before he flies straight up, and doesn't return until the next morning.

+

Peter's not interested at all in Samuel, or what his plans are, until he says, "Hiro will do what I ask of him. Anything I ask of him. There's a woman that he loves dearly, that he would go to great lengths to protect."

"I've tried changing the past before," Peter says, bored already. "It never works out well. Step on a butterfly and all that."

"Everything is possible with a little motivation, Peter." Samuel smiles, and something inside Peter breaks.

"And what do you want in return?"

"Your loyalty." He leans forward, and his eyes are black and bright and utterly insane. "That is all I require of you."

"Hiro's not going to agree to this."

"Trust me," is all Samuel says, and his hand on Peter's arm feels like a brand.

+

This is how Peter Petrelli saves his brother:

By destroying the world.

+

"Bad man. You are all bad man." Hiro says accusingly, and he looks at Peter as if he'd never been more disappointed in anyone.

Peter refuses to make eye contact, just gives him a time and a place, and hopes he gets it right. It's close enough, they have to hide for a while before he gets to Nathan, beautiful and strong and most importantly, not dead. He tells Hiro, "Now," and closes his eyes as Hiro lays one hand on each of them, feels the universe dissolve around him.

Samuel's still there when he returns, right where Peter left him, in the middle of riotous light and color and the smell of burnt popcorn in the air. "Welcome back."

Peter ignores him, because there's a dead man leaning casually against a nearby trailer door. He growls and starts towards him instinctively, but Samuel holds him back.

"It's okay, Peter. Sylar's with us."

Changing the past also changes the future.

"You are not my friend, Peter Petrelli," Hiro says, and there's blood dripping from his nose as he storms off.

Peter watches him go, until Nathan's voice snaps him to. "What's going on, Pete? Where are we?"

Peter grabs hold of one of Nathan's hands, alive and more vital than anything else in the world, and says, "It doesn't matter, Nathan. You're here. I'll explain everything later. I promise. Trust me."

+

Samuel says, "Come, Peter. We have work to do," and Peter follows.

\- end -


End file.
